dying gasp
1
8.1
- noun
- /ˈdaɪɪŋ ɡæsp/
:
último suspiro
- In his final moment, he uttered a dying gasp that echoed through the quiet room.
- the last dying gasp
Examples
-
A screaming baby coming from Mary Gault's eldest son's last dying gasps.
-
These are the last dying gasps of Creationists who think they can return America to some idealized point that never existed except in their own minds.
Blog text (19) -
Independent presidential candidate George Wallace tried to collect the pieces in 1968, but his 45 electoral votes represented a dying gasp of the New Deal-Fair Deal coalition that had prevailed for a generation.
Academic text (2001) -
As she took her last breath, a weak whisper escaped her lips, the dying gasp of a brave soul.
-
The once vibrant city now showed only the dying gasp of its former glory, with abandoned buildings and silence in the streets.
Synonyms
31
6.1
The final moment when a person dies
7
6.3
A final effort before something ends or fails
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'the last breath before death' is directly and literally derived from combining 'dying' (in the process of passing from life) with 'gasp' (a sudden intake of breath). This straightforward compositional relation is cross‑linguistically common and would be readily inferable by a B1 learner who knows both constituent words.
Etymology
Dying gasp shows a clear picture: the very last small gasp, a short breath as someone is dying. So the phrase means 'the last breath before death'.